Generation Z — those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s — is poised to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030, but attracting those professionals to military civilian careers will require legislative reforms and addressing cultural and structural barriers of the current hiring process.

Valerie Capers Workman, the chief talent engagement officer at Handshake, said using data-driven analysis throughout the hiring process is critical to understanding and evaluating the Generation Z cohort, particularly when it comes to candidates with technical skill sets.

“An AI skill set enables a candidate to have years of experience in months. This expectation that a candidate should have a certain level, achieve a certain level, or should have a certain number of years of experience — it no longer applies in the age of AI,” Workman said during a GovExec event on Thursday. “So when you’re looking at a candidate, it’s so important during that interview process to have that conversation, and if you’re comforted that they are answering the questions the way they should be answering them, and they have the skills and tools that you’re looking for. I know it’s uncomfortable, but you need to put aside what level they currently are at if they’re particularly in service, and how many years of experience they have if they’re not, because those don’t apply.”

Brynt Parmeter, the chief talent management officer at the Defense Department, echoed the sentiment, saying a candidate’s ability to leverage the technology tools “amplifies their ability to perform the tasks we need them to do and accomplish our missions.”

The Defense Department’s hiring process mostly mirrors the federal government’s process: There are seven primary steps and 43 sub-steps that must be followed to hire a candidate.

That includes 34 steps that are mandated by congressional statute and eight of the remaining steps are related to process flow, such as moving applications between offices, making a job offer, or conducting internal reviews. The current system, said Parmeter, often struggles to match qualified candidates to roles since it remains tied to compliance-heavy processes created decades ago.

“How do we look at assessing someone for a role? It’s a blend of both a validated skill that you’ve attained along with demonstrated experience in a place of work where you validated that,” said Parmeter.

“What we want to be able to do is go back and we think we’re going to have some opportunities over the next couple of years in the coming Congress and work with the House and Senate Armed Services Committee and work through some legislative proposals that can help us better understand the impacts of AI on this conversation and technology, so that we can evolve these 34 compliance based steps into something that makes more sense, that does a better job of helping us put people into roles leveraging the full range of technologies, not something that made sense, 20, 30, 40, years ago.”

In addition to rigid hiring processes, cultural biases within the DoD in hiring add barriers to recruiting qualified candidates, particularly from nontraditional backgrounds.

“We had some hiring managers, and I’d love to communicate this to all of those GS-13, 14,15 hiring managers out there. Take a close look at yourself and your own organization. In some cases, getting comfortable with talent that may be considered nontraditional. They may have come through different pathways. They may have come in and be completely eligible and qualified for a role. But there’s a subconscious desire to hire yourself, hire someone who’s had the exact same experiences as you.”

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